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Category: Illegally Blind

Today I came across an article where some Reddit users were wondering how blind people know they’re gay. Or, in other words, how a blind person conceptualizes their sexuality when they don’t have the assistance of vision? Apparently some blind people saw the actual thread and responded, legitimately trying to explain how it is that blind people feel attraction without sight. A concept surely even a child could grasp if they thought about it for 2.5 seconds, but I digress. They listed things like voice, smell, personality, etc as contributing factors in forming their attractions, and also used their knowledge of their orientation at a young age as evidence that it isn’t a choice. The article I read, which was a separate thing from the Reddit thread, consolidated some of these responses and used them to make some kind of point about … I don’t know … the universal experience of love? How wonderful it is to be lgbtq because it even transcends sight? To be honest, I’m unclear on what the purpose of the article was. But I know how it felt to read it.

Like I’m a curiosity. Like I’m a mythical being mere mortals can’t possibly understand, despite being a mere mortal myself, with all the feelings, desires, and preferences that entails. Like my time and emotional labor don’t matter and so it’s fine to waste them with this inane nonsense couched in a question about being lgbtq, when, as articulated by a friend I discussed it with, the root of the question was really simply, “Can blind people love?” Like I’m such a confusing anomaly that the rules of humanity don’t apply to me.

Or, like the only way to experience love and attraction is the way sighted people experience it, which is apparently through their eyes and doesn’t engage any other senses or feelings. “How do you know when you’re attracted to someone if you can’t see them?” was the overarching question. How do sighted people know when they’re attracted to someone? Do they not feel the butterflies in their stomachs? Do they not have a deeper than average interest in a person and what they say, think, and feel? Do they not smell their skin, their hair, their perfume/cologne and feel all wobbly? Yes, obviously they do. So why is this even a question? It’s clear that attraction is not reliant on sight alone, even for sighted people. It may spark an initial attraction, but it’s not what ultimately determines your entire orientation, and it’s not what lasts past the initial spark and lets you know if you’re really and truly attracted to someone.

Infantilization and desexualization of disabled people is nothing new, and it crops up in all sorts of places, in all sorts of ways. Some are very blatant and gross and everyone recognizes them, but some are more subtle and disguised in seemingly innocent questions and feel-good articles. I feel like this is an instance of the latter. The assumption seems to be that obviously love and attraction are sighted phenomena, relying on vision in order to be perceived and understood. And obviously, since we as blind people lack that imperative sense, we’re asexual and aromantic by default. This is, as most blind people could tell you, a painfully common misconception about us, which comes from everyone from the most to the least educated in matters of disability. I expect it from Reddit, which is a cesspool of garbage and ignorance and general bad, but when people start taking it from there to make articles for a purpose I can’t figure out, I get frustrated.

You might say, or at least think, that I’m oversensitive. Making mountains out of molehills. Blowing things out of proportion. Pick your saying of choice. You wouldn’t be the first–far from it–and you certainly won’t be the last. But just put that aside for one moment and ask yourself a few questions. Why is it considered perfectly acceptable to ask an entire group of people about their personal relationships to sexuality and sexual orientation, to pry into how they experience it and question its legitimacy? Why is it assumed that because we lack one sense, not even the one that matters most in this scenario, the way we come about realizing our orientations must be vastly different from the way every other person does? Why is it enough of a talking point to turn into an entire article, which doesn’t even make any broader point than, “Wow, it turns out that blind people are capable of feeling things, just like us!”? Why would anyone think anything otherwise, and why would they need an article to tell them?

Blind people are, in fact, capable of feeling things, just like you! It’s pretty amazing. Some of those feelings are even about sex. I know, I know, freaky, right? The disableds are out here trying to get laid, just like you! Or they’re not, just like others of you! They’re trying to find love, a genuine connection, a good conversation, a fun night with no strings attached, all the strings, including marriage and, wait for it …………….. even ……………………………….. children!!! That’s right, sometimes blind people want to be, and are, parents! I’ll be waiting for the Reddit thread and subsequent article on how that’s possible, now that we’ve hopefully wrapped up the matter of whether and how we can feel attraction and maybe even act on it.

I’ve been wanting to write a thing about blindness and the body for years and years, but I couldn’t pin down the core of it. Every time I would try to start, it just sort of wandered away from me and went into territory I wasn’t trying to cover. But I think I’ve finally figured it out, and who knows if I’ll ever turn it into a full polished piece, so I’m just going to say it here, now, like this, before I lose it again.

When you’re a totally blind person, your only idea of your appearance comes from other people. I mean, within reason, obviously. I know I have a crooked tooth that kind of sticks out, for example, without needing to be told that, and I know roughly how my height compares to others’ and what my general body shape is and that I have very dry and sensitive skin that requires a lot of managing and etc etc. But as a blind person, you don’t know if you’re attractive to other people unless they tell you, and you don’t know why you’re attractive unless they tell you, and you don’t know if your appearance differs in any major, noticeable way from other people’s unless they tell you. And then, all you have to go on is still what one person tells you, and maybe another person will tell you a completely different thing, and so your idea of your appearance and attractiveness fluctuates and is never completely stable.

And when you’re a blind woman, in particular, you have to contend with all these uncertainties while still being expected to perform the culturally appropriate standards of womanhood, and, arguably, to perform them to a degree not everyone is expected to because you’re disabled and need to compensate for that. So you live your life trying to do this thing that’s kind of … fundamentally impossible? Or at least, impossible without the input of others, which, again, is biased and one-dimensional (that’s not the right term, but I’ll figure out the right one later). You know that you’re constantly being observed and judged in a way you can’t control and in a way you can’t ever fully measure up to, and when you try, you don’t know if you’ve gotten it right or if it will be obvious that you really have no idea what you’re doing and everyone can tell and just won’t say anything.

There are so many articles and blog posts and audio series’ that are geared toward helping blind women learn to put on makeup, and so many threads on Facebook and Twitter about how to figure out which colors match and which don’t so you know what to wear, and how to dress professionally for job interviews so your potential employer will take you more seriously. And I understand why all of this exists and feels necessary (to a degree), but it makes me so, so anxious and always has. I do have a double anxiety disorder (generalized and social), which contributes, but I feel so scrutinized in public and, in different ways, in private, and I do it to myself, too, when no one else is around doing it for me. And I think this is largely why.

I’ll never be able to say with certainty that this is what I look like, and this is what I judge my own attractiveness level to be regardless of what other people tell me it is, and I’ll never be able to feel entirely confident going out in public without first Facetiming my mom to make sure my outfits coordinate and my hair isn’t doing anything weird and my jewelry works. And I’ll always feel like I have to do that, even when I don’t want to, because the world is watching and forming judgments and yes, this is the case for everyone, but when you can look in a mirror and see yourself, generally you have an idea of what you look like. You know whether or not you’ve achieved the aesthetic you were going for, and whether or not you have something on your face and whether or not you need to swap that headband for this one, and you know that when you go out, people are going to see what you want them to see, what you’ve created for them to see. I want that power, and I’ll never have it, and all I can ever do is mimic it to the best of my abilities.

This is also why, I think, I don’t take compliments well. I’ve been told this often throughout my life, in varying ways, and I know it’s a problem. But how do I know how to assimilate that compliment into my perception of myself, or if I even should? How do I know if it’s true? I guess you could argue that if it’s genuine and feels true to the person giving it, that should be enough, but … it’s not. That sounds terrible, but it’s the way I feel. I don’t want to do this, to pick apart everything someone says to or about me with regard to my physical appearance trying to figure out where it fits or if it fits at all, but I don’t know how else to form a picture of myself.

I deeply, deeply admire blind people and especially blind women who have managed to reach a place where they don’t care about these things, or who feel confident that they’ve mastered them sufficiently to exist in the world in an anxiety-free way, but I am neither. I get so frustrated so often when I think I’ve gotten it and then my mom tells me I need a tank top under this shirt, or can’t wear those pants because the pattern on them doesn’t go with the shirt, or my hair is too curly and I need to wet it down and then get it to the right amount of curly, or whatever other minuscule thing I’ve managed to miss, and she says that it’s not just blindness, that even sighted people have a hard time with it sometimes. And this is why, but I’ve never been able to articulate it properly until now. I know that sighted people have problems with this stuff and that it’s not fair to them either, that society has gotten to this point where it’s such a huge source of anxiety for so many people to look perfect at all times. But it’s never going to be the same, because ultimately sighted people can always look in that mirror and see their reflection, and the only form of reflection I have is words from other people. Words that aren’t consistent from person to person, and so a reflection that’s never consistent, either.

“Am I pretty?” is not a socially acceptable question to ask, and if you ask someone who’s already close to and cares about you, their answer is always going to come from that place and so, again, have a bias. I wish that there were some way of asking it to an entirely neutral third party who could also be objective, but there isn’t. And, more to the point, I really wish I didn’t want to ask it to anyone and could just be comfortable in my skin, a la Beyonce, but I do and I can’t. I don’t know how to reconcile any of this and I’m not trying to make any sweeping point here or anything, this is just something that has nagged at and caused anxiety for me for years and I’ve never pinpointed exactly what it is or where it’s coming from until now, so, as always, here’s a weird messy feelings thing with no destination. The end.